(Image from Breibart.)
Sean Penn, one of the loopier players in the Hollywood cavalcade, struck a blow for reason yesterday, at the Cannes Festival (of all places).
US actor and director Sean Penn lit up and led a minor revolt at the Cannes film festival against France's draconian new anti-smoking laws.
Penn, the head of the jury that will pick the best films, pulled out a cigarette and puffed on it at a press conference with fellow jury members, in defiance of laws in place since January that ban smoking in public enclosed spaces.
Your Bloviator gave up smoking a decade ago and doesn't miss the dirty habit one bit. Just the same, I find it irksome so many of my fellow baby boomers (and gen-xers, too), who managed to co-exist for years with those who smoked, somehow and mysteriously developed an allergy to cigarette smoke sometime during the second Reagan administration. The evidence of the deleterious effects of so-called "second-hand smoke" is laughable; the real reason for the spate of laws directed against users of a product that at last check was still legal is an old, familiar tale: "Your activity offends me so you can no longer do it."
Good for Sean Penn. Now, if he could use that scintilla of reason he seemingly possesses to reconsider his unearthly views on topical issues, he just might redeem himself. Sadly, and more likely, Penn will one day kick the habit himself and quickly become the world champeen of anti-smoking zealots, his wackadoodle worldview blisfully unscathed.
(h/t the Corner at NRO.)
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